Gasoline prices, now averaging $3.62 a gallon, have been
identified by Americans as their leading economic concern.

Such worry is one more validation that America is a great
country. How’s that? In most of the world, places like the
Philippines and China, the price of food, not fuel, is
what people worry about.

Yes, we Americans sure like to complain about the price of
relative convenience and great luxury. We’ve done so for years. In
June 2005, nearly three years ago, a Pew Center survey indicated
gasoline prices were the greatest economic concern for 44 percent
of Americans, ahead of the federal deficit, jobs, trade imbalance,
inflation, interest rates, housing costs and, yes, food prices.

The price of gasoline three years ago was $2.21 a gallon, $1.41
less than today.

To be fair, the price of gasoline affects lower-income people to
greater extent than anyone else, and it is certainly a bigger
factor in their spending decisions. But there is little evidence to
suggest the rest of us are doing anything different because gas
costs more money. We still drive, everywhere, most often alone, in
high-powered rolling ships that, while more economical than Dad’s
’67 Chrysler, can hardly be called efficient.

What’s the solution to high gas prices? Better asked, what’s the
problem? What are we doing without? How has the economy been
ravaged? What sacrifices need to be made by Americans, most of whom
have never been asked to sacrifice anything?

No recent political economic proposal been more thoroughly
dissed than that of John McCain, the Arizona senator and
all-but-assured Republican presidential candidate. McCain suggested
a moratorium on the 18.4 cents per gallon federal fuel tax from
Memorial Day to Labor Day, a move that would drain $10 billion or
so in federal road construction funds and – maybe – reduce the
price of gasoline during the summer travel season, encouraging
Americans to drive more, increasing consumption and likely raising
the price of fuel. That’s unwise public policy.

Sen. Hillary Clinton jumped aboard the tax moratorium SUV, and
she rolled out that worn-out Democratic solution, the windfall
profits tax on Big Oil, to make up the difference in tax revenue.
Puh-leeze.

Everyone likes to blame Big Oil. Consider, though, that
Exxon-Mobil’s first-quarter profits of $10.9 billion represented
9.3 percent of revenue. Microsoft, another company everyone likes
to blame for something, had first-quarter profits of $4.39 billion
… 30 percent of its revenue. Yes, Big Oil’s revenue is at
record-high levels. But why? World demand for oil is outpacing
world supply, driving price higher. The U.S. dollar is limp as a
wet noodle, meaning it takes more U.S. dollars to buy a barrel of
Saudi Arabian oil. It all adds up to more money going out the doors
of American families, and out of America as a nation.

It that a problem? Arguably, yes, but apparently not of a
magnitude sufficient to attract serious attention, at nearly any
level.

If America and its government are truly worried about gasoline
prices, we should let the market drive.